Joe Blogs.... this makes Joe a better writer...

A report by the National Literacy Trust has been making the news today.

As reported on the BBC NEWS website, technology helps to make the children who use it "better writers"..

This is perhaps because they spend longer actually writing, and thinking about audience and purpose.

When I was younger, I used to keep a daily diary, and kept it up for years. If I'd had blogs back then I would certainly have used them. This meant that I had a daily opportunity to write a few hundred carefully chosen words, and construct narratives, select which of the day's events to record, and how; I even had the text version of "widgets" - I used to record additional detail some years, such as what I'd eaten, favourite songs, lessons I'd had at school. I wrote and read voraciously and still try to do that now. I'm sure that means that I find writing relatively easy, and (hopefully) produce text that is easy to read and understand, as well as being sophisticated when I need to be...

The report featured in the article was based on consultations with over 3000 children.

Comments

complexitybenjamin said…

Though I never was able to maintain a daily diary like Alan, I too was a voracious reader and writer. I think I was of the first generation that grew up (well, at least from my early teens) with a PC at home - my big brother made do with a Spectrum. There was something powerfully liberating about the way that Word allowed me to delete, copy and have a sense of real control over my writing. I also fell in love with Word's thesaurus - the use of which is now second nature to me. Thus, at first glance, this report's findings make sense to me. I will try and give it a look when I get a chance.

8 December 2009 at 11:43